had to recover before they could begin to
talk, but from the first moment Mrs. March perceived that Mrs. Adding
had something to say. The more freely to say it she asked Mrs. March
into her hotel, which was in the same street with the pension of the
Triscoes, and she let her boy go off about the exploration of Carlsbad;
he promised to be back in an hour.

"Well, now what scrape are you in?" March asked when his wife came home,
and began to put off her things, with signs of excitement which he could
not fail to note. He was lying down after a long tramp, and he seemed
very comfortable.

His question suggested something of anterior import, and she told him
about the silhouettes, and the advantage the young people had taken of
their power over her through their knowledge of her foolish behavior at
the ball.

He said, lazily: "They seem to be working you for all you're worth. Is
that it?"

"No; there is something worse. Something's happened which throws all
that quite in the shade. Mrs. Adding is here."

"Mrs. Adding?" he repeated, with a dimness for names which she would not
allow was growing on him.

"Don't be stupid, dear! Mrs. Adding, who sat opposite Mr. Kenby on the
Norumbia. The mother of the nice boy."

"Oh, yes! Well, that's good!"

"No, it isn't! Don't say such a thing--till you know!" she cried, with a
certain shrillness which warned him of an unfathomed seriousness in the
fact. He sat up as if better to confront the mystery. "I have been at
her hotel, and she has been telling me that she's just come from Berlin,
and that Mr. Kenby's been there, and--Now I won't have you making a joke
of it, or breaking out about it, as if it were not a thing to be looked
for; though of course with the others on our hands you're not to blame
for not thinking of it. But you can see yourself that she's young and
good-looking. She did speak beautifully of her son, and if it were not
for him, I don't believe she would hesitate--"

"For heaven's sake, what are you driving at?" March broke in, and she
answered him as vehemently:

"He's asked her to marry him!"

"Kenby? Mrs. Adding?"

"Yes!"

"Well, now, Isabel, this won't do! They ought to be ashamed of
themselves. With that morbid, sensitive boy! It's shocking--"

"Will you listen? Or do you want me to stop?" He arrested himself at
her threat, and she resumed, after giving her contempt of his turbulence
time to sink in, "She refused him, of course!"

"Oh, all rig